๚F2017N94๚ij16:30-18:00
๊F3F1200-L
uาFTong WangiThe University of Chicago Harris School of Public Polic
y, Ph.D. candidatej
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่FA Welfare Comparison of School Choice Mechanisms

AbstractF

In China, Chinese parallel mechanism is widely used for school admissions.
Theoretically, Chinese parallel mechanism is less manipulable than Boston
mechanism, yet it is argued that Boston mechanism is more efficient under
certain conditions. Using a survey of high school choice participants, we
recover students' preferences over schools directly. Merging the survey
data with the administrative data allows us to directly measure the
students' welfare and also measure the "magnitude" of students'
manipulation of their preferences. Since we have the administrative data
on students' choices over the years which covered the period when Boston
mechanism was used and also when Chinese parallel mechanism was used, by
assuming students' relative preference over high schools is stable, we
directly compare students' welfare under the two mechanisms, both of which
are manipulable. The result shows that Boston mechanism leads to lower
average welfare than Chinese parallel mechanism and Boston mechanism hurts
students with lower social economic status. The mechanism change leads to
little change in equity, from Gini coefficient of 0.15 under BM to 0.148
under Chinese parallel mechanism. Students rank the last choice in the
first block more aggressively under Chinese parallel mechanism than Boston
Mechanism. Evidence shows that Chinese parallel mechanism gives higher
test score students less chance and lower score students more chance to
elaborate their ability to game the mechanism, which can partially explain
the welfare performance of the two mechanisms.